10 best books of July: the Monitor's picks

Here are the 10 July books to which the Monitor's book critics give the highest grades.

2. "JFK's Last Hundred Days," by Thurston Clarke

Popular historian Thurston Clarke takes a fresh look at the last 100 days in the life of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, JFK's Last Hundred Days argues that Kennedy has been underrated by history and that, had he survived, he would have proven himself a great statesman. You don't necessarily have to agree with Clarke's assessment to enjoy this compelling portrait of one of the towering figures of 20th-century America. Read our full review of "JFK's Last Hundred Days" here.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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